Why Do We Dress Up on Halloween?

Remember when we talked about Samhain? No? Come on! Well, I’ll remind you. Samhain (pronounced Sow-in. I know, it seems weird, but believe me) was the Celtic harvest festival. Fun fact: Samhain actually means “summer’s end” which makes a lot of sense when you know that the festival was about marking the end of the year, when their crops would die.

Anyway, dressing up goes all the way back to Samhain. See it’s all tied in together! Remember how I told you that they dressed up? Well the reason for this was they were trying to disguise themselves from the spirits for fear of what they might do. They figured that if they disguised themselves, the spirits would be totally bamboozled and wouldn’t know who was who. If a spirit wished a person harm, they would have to find them first and with their, I’m sure extremely detailed costumes (I mean, really, there’s only so much one can do with animal skins. No full body Storm Trooper outfits for them). They tried to be as scary as possible to scare these spirits off.

Here are some of my favourite costumes of people I took this year at Fan Expo (it doesn’t have to be Halloween to have an excuse to dress up).

Total Superhero Mash-up!

Why yes, that is Stan Lee with an Emma Frost and Wolverine.

She really could be Snow White!

So what are you guys dressing up as this year for Halloween? Leave a comment!